written by Beckie of beckiegkengle.com
Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut with your photography? I know for me personally, it has happened numerous times. How do you get out of that rut? What are the steps you take to make that happen?
Something that I have recently tried is to go out and shoot as though I was shooting with a film camera. What this forced me to do was to think about each individual shot with intention! Making sure everything is just right before I press that shutter release button! And while I may not be happy with every single image, I can learn from these and make changes to make them better next time!
Here are a few shots I snapped at a recent session where I only took a total of 75 images (because we had about 30 minutes for our little session, and they were all indoors with natural window light due to the weather). Taking less images forced me to be more intentional about my shots. And in the end, my friends still got 20 great images (as many as I would give a client where I snapped 200+ images)
So, I challenge you to do the same! Use your smallest capacity memory card (1G if you have on) and set your camera to take pictures at the largest file size available (if you don’t have a small memory card, use a recently formatted, empty card and only take 24 exposures). Go out and shoot as though you only have 24 exposures on your “roll of film”! And to make it more fun, I’m giving away this 3×3 storyboard template to showcase your images from this challenge! Click here to download the 3×3 storyboard!
I’m going to work on this over the next couple of weekends, and make a post about it on my blog! I’ll link back here when I’ve done that! 🙂
If you enjoyed reading my post and would like to follow more of my journey through life in photography, feel free to visit my blog or follow my Facebook page!
About Beckie
That is great that you are able to look back to your experience of shooting with film. I don’t yet have the ability to reference back to that (as I am currently learning on my dslr) but it’s nice that you gave us another option to consider. My husband often refers back to film when he is trying to get a point across to me, and I often look at him like I don’t know what he is talking about.
I didn’t do a whole lot of film shooting before going digital. Actually, my sister was into photography long before I was. But often I would grab her film body (a Nikon N80) and play around!
Thank you so much for this free storyboard. I know I’m going to use it on my blog more than once! I found your site via Pinterest and I’m thoroughly enjoying going through all your helpful and interesting posts.
Just realized that was you that sent me the email! Haha, I’m a nerd! Anyway, I love seeing how you used the template! I hope you’re enjoying it!
I’m one of those folks who learned photography on a 35mm Canon camera back in the 1980s, and hauled that heavy baby and lenses around Asia, too. I think it’s a good idea you have; take pictures with *purpose* and pre-edit and crop in your head as you use your eyes. Pay attention to salient details. Think outside that box on the camera screen!
Thanks for the reminder!